Drone Mapping the Way of the Future for Insurance Companies

Drone mapping provides insurance companies with an easy, fast and accurate method of documenting a scene and preserving key details while also letting the process of clean-up and reconstruction begin as quickly as possible. Recently, Dronotec, a start-up company specializing in drone inspection for insurance companies conducted a case study to determine just how much money this drone mapping was saving insurance companies. Dronotec’s founder, Emilien Rose, worked as a loss assessor in France and Australia for 10 years and conducted assessments of about 8,000 claims. Rose believes that Dronetec and drone mapping can really save time and money for insurers.

For example, recently a fire in France consumed 5 acres of a vacation destination on the coast. Once the insurance company came in to assess the damages, they realized that the sheer size of the site posed quite a challenge. Moreover, so much of the property was damaged by the fire, inspectors could not enter the properties or inspect the roofs without the threat of personal injury. A plane attempted to capture photos but many of the photos were not clear or sharp enough to use. However, the loss adjuster recommend a drone to do the mapping of the scene. In about 10 minutes, the drone collected more than 300 geo-tagged photos flying about 180 feet over the property. The images were uploaded to a drone mapping program, and three hours later a 2-D map and 3-D model of the property and the damages were available. The high degree of accuracy of not only the photos but the mapping improved the likelihood of identifying the cause of the accident exponentially. And the insurance company’s team members were able to collaborate and review the mapping in one cloud-based space. In this one case, the use of drone mapping saved this French insurance company about €99,985,000 (or about $110,600,000).

The ability to quickly process claims is very helpful to insurance companies with large scale disasters that have many claims filed related to the same incident.

Rose’s study not only supports the effective use of drone mapping but also suggests that maybe insurance companies can start using drones not only for mapping incidents but to inspect properties and verify risks before issuing insurance. Insurance companies can then work with their prospective customers to mitigate risks and hopefully prevent disasters from even occurring.

Perhaps it is tools like this that have led to the boom of testing and research of drones by insurers in 2015 and this year, too. Numerous insurers received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) drone exemptions in 2015. Exemptions have been granted for activities including, among others: (1) aerial data collection in support of inspections for insurance underwriting and claims adjusting, and (2) research related to the use of drones for insurance functions including using drone imagery in re-underwriting, catastrophe response, roof inspection, and claims resolutions settings.

The exemption from FAA regulations permits insurers to more efficiently test small drones. Insurers receiving the exemption may fly drones during the day within line of sight of a trained pilot and air-crew, thus avoiding the need to perform test flights at FAA approved sites. Other insurers received exemptions allowing the insurers to begin operating drones in catastrophic situations. Pending amendments to the current regulations that, if passed, benefit insurers, include suspending federal restrictions and requirements that limit the use of drones post-disaster. The passage of this amendment would permit insurers to quickly respond when access to the site of a catastrophe is limited.

And as we previously wrote, the FAA Part 107 final regulations for commercial drones, which will take effect in August, may have a further impact on the insurance industry. However, it is unclear what, if any, impact it will have on the insurance industry other than that drone owners will need to insure that they have proper insurance coverage. At least one insurer has already introduced a policy for drones that covers the pilot, non-pilot “crew”, property damage and optional “war, hijacking and terrorism” coverage.

Legislative and regulatory activity regarding drones continues to be vigorous at both the federal and state levels.

Disclaimer

This Blog/Website is made available by the lawyer or law firm publisher for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Website publisher. The Blog/Website should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state. Any opinions expressed on this Blog/Website are opinions only of the author, expressed at the time the material is written based on information available to the author at that time, and are not opinions of the author's law firm or any of the author's or the law firm's clients. This Blog/Website is not intended to be attorney advertising. To the extent it might be deemed to be attorney advertising, it should not be considered advertising or to be seeking legal work in any jurisdiction in which the author is not admitted to practice law (i.e., jurisdictions other than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and various federal courts).

Stay Connected

About Robinson+Cole

Robinson+Cole is a service mark of Robinson & Cole LLP, an Am Law 200 firm with approximately 200 lawyers in nine offices serving regional, national, and international clients, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Since 1845, Robinson & Cole LLP has expanded to meet the changing needs of clients. The firm represents corporate, governmental, and nonprofit entities, as well as individual clients, in a wide range of matters, including corporate; business and insurance litigation; tax and tax-exempt; finance; public finance; land use, environmental and utilities, and real estate; health law; labor, employment, and benefits; intellectual property and technology; and government relations. For more information, please visit www.rc.com.